Beer crafters follow their taste buds

JOANNE BLAIN, Special to The Sun05.30.2014

For his Old Jalopy Pale Ale, named Beer of the Year in 2013 at the Canadian Brewing Awards, David Bowkett of the Powell Street Craft Brewery combined English malts with North American hops for a beer with good body and notes of citrus.Nicole Stefanopoulos

James Walton started Storm Brewing in 1994 and bided his time while Vancouverites gradually developed a taste for craft beer.

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Who wakes up in the morning and decides caramel and sea salt would be perfect in a Scotch ale, or that an India Pale Ale would taste great with a hit of basil?

The wildly creative minds staffing the kegs at the Lower Mainland’s exploding crop of craft breweries, that’s who. How they got into the business varies, but what they all share is a passion for satisfying the increasingly sophisticated tastes of beer lovers.

Meet three of the local brewers winning fans and accolades for their creations.

James Walton, Storm Brewing

James Walton was only 15 when he made his first batch of home-brewed beer, but it took him a while to turn that experiment into a career.

In between, he got a bachelor of science degree in mycology — “mould, slime and spores” — and put it to use managing pharmaceutical plants and starting a mushroom farm.

But a trip south of the border more than 20 years ago brought him back to his teenage passion.

“I was touring around in Seattle and there were amazing beers everywhere. And I thought ‘What the hell is going on? Vancouver has nothing like this.’”

Walton started Storm Brewing in 1994 and bided his time while Vancouverites gradually developed a taste for craft beer.

“I don’t know why it took so long, but now people are cluing in,” he says. “I made a sour beer in 1996 that I really couldn’t sell for years. But in the last five years, they’ve been going great.”

Storm’s bestsellers are Hurricane IPA and Black Plague Stout, but Walton also makes two or three more inventive beers every week in small batches for growler refills only.

“Right now, we have a rosemary-infused IPA, a basil-infused IPA, a vanilla whiskey stout and a radler, which is a grapefruit juice or other fruit juice mixed with beer, so it’s kind of sweet and sour.”

And he’s got something special in the works for beer lovers who are prepared to be patient, since it will spend a year or two aging in oak barrels before he releases it.

“It’s called the Glacial Man of Extinction. It’s a sour beer and I froze all of the water out of it so it’s quite syrupy and heavy. You just want to have a couple of sips of it because it’s really strong-flavoured — you could pour it on ice cream, it’s so sweet and thick.”

Graham With, Parallel 49 Brewing Company

Start with something tried and true and then be prepared to go a bit crazy — that’s Graham With’s approach to making beer.

“I start with a certain flavour profile of a classic style of beer and think of interesting ways I can diverge from the style and make it taste the way I want it to,” he says. “Sometimes it is pretty far out there and other times it is pretty close to the classic style.”

The Salty Scot, a salted caramel Scotch ale, falls into the “far out there” camp.

“It seemed a little strange to make, but it has gone over really well,” he says. “It went from a limited release to a beer we will probably put out every year.”

Parallel 49 is known for its inventive beer names, like Hoparazzi (a hoppy gold lager), Ugly Sweater (a slightly sweet, creamy stout) and Seedspitter (a watermelon-infused Belgian witbier). Its biggest seller is its Gypsy Tears Ruby Ale, which With says “has a great hop aroma and taste without being overly bitter.”

To mark the brewery’s second anniversary, With is working on a beer called

Wild Ride, a Belgian strong ale with stone-fruit notes that he hopes to have out in early June. And he’s just about to start canning the Tricycle Grapefruit Radler, a lager blended with ruby red grapefruit juice.

With, who earned a degree in chemical and biological engineering before trying his hand at beermaking, welcomes the current boom in craft breweries in and around Vancouver.

“There are a lot of people who are thirsty for craft beer, so there is plenty of room for more breweries. Competition will push everyone to make better and better beer, which, as a local craft beer lover myself, is a very good thing.”

Right now, With’s biggest problem is keeping up with demand.

“We are hoping to produce 1.8 million litres this year but it may be out of our grasp.”

David Bowkett, Powell Street Craft Brewery

For David Bowkett, inspiration starts at the bottom of a glass.

“The beers I’ve drank tell me a lot about the beers I want to make,” says Powell Street’s founder and self-taught head brewer. “I take the good things about those beers and try to incorporate them into my own. The bad things I work hard to leave out.”

He often starts with a flavour or an ingredient that he wants to incorporate, then picks the style of beer that he thinks would complement it.

For his Old Jalopy Pale Ale, named Beer of the Year in 2013 at the Canadian Brewing Awards, Bowkett combined English malts with North American hops for a beer with good body and notes of citrus.

In addition to its mainstays, on tap at the brewery during the summer will be two seasonal beers, White IPA (which incorporates coriander, orange peel and Citra hops) and Seasonal ISA (for India Season Ale, a low-alcohol IPA with tropical fruit-flavoured hops).

Bowkett’s favourite beer is one even he can’t get any more, the Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter he made for a B.C. Beer Awards event last year.

“It was a one-off and we only made 30 litres of it, but it was fantastic. The best way to describe it was that it tasted like the perfect Manhattan in beer form.”

The brewery is getting ready to move into new, larger digs this summer, down the street from its current location on Vancouver’s Powell Street near Victoria Drive. It has been struggling to keep up with the demand that Bowkett thinks is driven not only by a growing appreciation for craft beer, but by a desire among consumers for locally made products with natural ingredients.

“People are more conscious of what they’re consuming,” he says. “Why would someone buy a chemically derived product over one that is made naturally right down the street from them?”

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